Speaker Kenton Allen

Kenton Allen is CEO of Big Talk Productions - winner of Best Independent Production Company at the 2017 Broadcast Awards. He is a multi-award-winning producer who holds the record for the most individual awards for Best Situation Comedy in the history of BAFTA, with multiple wins for Rev., The Royle Family and Him & Her. Other notable credits include the Oscar award-winning film Six Shooter, an array of comedy series including; A Young Doctor’s Notebook, Cockroaches, Crashing, Free Agents, Friday Night Dinner, Give Out Girls, Mr. Sloane, The Job Lot and the drama series The Town, Youngers and Our Zoo.

Kenton was the Executive Producer on all of Big Talk’s 2016 slate including; Friday Night Dinner S4, Raised by Wolves S2 and Mum which won Best Comedy at the 2017 Broadcast Awards and BPG Awards, as well as a BAFTA TV Craft Award and has unsurprisingly been commissioned for another series. He also oversaw the triumphant return of Cold Feet which was quickly recommissioned for another 7x60 series for ITV and is currently in production. Last year saw Kenton executive produce three TV pilots; We The Jury, Back and Timewasters for BBC2, Channel 4 and ITV2, the latter two being commissioned to series for 2017.

This year Kenton will be the Executive Producer on all of Big Talk’s current and new series. Brand new and exciting output includes Back, an acerbic comedy, which will appear on Channel 4 later this year, Bliss, a six-part comedy series co-produced with Merman for Sky Atlantic. Other comedy includes Timewasters a series commissioned by ITV2 and Just A Couple, a comedy for BBC3’s new online platform. As well as single drama Diana & I created for BBC2 and U.S. – shot comedy drama Living The Dream which will premiere on Sky1 this Autumn.

Kenton has led the dynamic growth of Big Talk Productions over the past nine years, including BBCW’s investment in Big Talk in 2008 which culminated in the sale of the company to ITV Studios in 2013.

Kenton is now leading the company’s strategic growth into internationally co-produced drama and original programming for North America, developing both comedy and drama projects with major US cable and broadcast networks, including Michael Whitehorn and Dan O’Shannon’s adaptation of Friday Night Dinner for CBS Network via CBS Studios, and Oscar Winner Diablo Cody’s reimagining of Raised by Wolves for ABC via Warner Bros TV.